Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“An idiom is this articulation of group membership, the sharing of a sacred center, and its anthropological “surplus,” or awareness that the signs designating that center might be otherwise and in fact are otherwise, having their equivalents in every other group. The preservation of an idiom, moreover, depends upon sharpening the differences between equivalents rather than ironing them out—the attempt to create more general signs that would smooth out idiomatic differences is really just the process of creating new groups, albeit ones that claim to speak (and may do so more or less meaningfully) in the name of, say, “humanity.” One sign of an autonomous idiom is the proliferation of individual styles, as the idiom becomes rich enough to gather influences from a range of other idioms as a way of enhancing its own distinctiveness—a very good example is the copious wealth of Renaissance English, with its avaricious devouring of Latin, Italian and French influence, its engagement with the emergent sciences, and the problems of translating the Bible, establishing national unity and devising a specifically Anglican form of Christianity.”

— Adam Katz, The Right of the Idiom, Yet Again · Sep 2010 · GABlog